A company that knows the difference between a consumer and enthusiast product

I am back from CES now but one of the companies that I was most impressed with was Eton. They are the US distributor of Grundig shortwave radios. If you’ve seen the Grundig lineup you know how daunting some of those products can be to use.

That is why I was so pleasantly surprised by Eton’s own line of crank radios. First, the products seem to be engineered to be easy to use even though have many functions. For example you’ll see in the picture that the main, most used functions have giant knobs while other lesser functions are controlled by much smaller buttons.

Eton clearly understands the philosophy of “be ready to support what you sell.” The very first thing in their manuals is their phone support numbers and office hours. Also, every product page has a downloadable PDF manual.

Finally, they seem to understand that “the little things count.” Most of their radios have a port to charge a cell phone. So, Eton offers to send a charger tip to match a customers specific phone for free. Other companies would tack on a shipping charge or require customers to copy receipts, send in proof of purchase, etc. In the same vein, Eton has a online parts store with many battery covers listed at reasonable prices. How many electronic devices have you had in your life that had lost their battery cover?

I hope to be able to talk with Eton more to study what else they have have been doing right.